Boom Town: Tech Jobs Have Grown By A Third In San Francisco Since The Start Of 2012

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Updated. The visual evidence of boom times returning to San Francisco is all around the city: Apartments are nearly impossible to find, rents and home prices are shooting up, fancy new restaurants are popping up daily, and the transit system is packed.

Now, actual data is backing it up.

Tech jobs in San Francisco have nearly tripled grown by a third since the start of 2012 — from 13,000 to 44,000 31,00 to 44,000 — according to new figures released by San Francisco Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting’s office. Seems that all the hiring activity, along with established companies and startups moving from the South Bay into the city proper, are really adding up when it comes to tech employment.

The top neighborhoods for tech jobs are South of Market, South Beach, and Mission Bay. The job growth is directly impacting the real estate market, pushing home values higher, according to Ting’s office.

“Our city serves as a model for growing and attracting 21st Century businesses that offer good, high-wage jobs. We can look to San Francisco to set an example when it comes to technology, life sciences, biotech and also a quality of life that attracts the best and brightest workers in the world.”

It’s not an accident that San Francisco is seeing this boom. Politicians in the city, led by Mayor Ed Lee, have been actively courting techies to set up shop in the urban center, rather than in the suburbs that have historically made up “Silicon Valley.” Other cities, notably New York led by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, are looking to follow suit.

Update: Previously, this article reported, based on info reported by a press release issued by Phil Ting’s office, that the jump in jobs was 3X. This was also reported by a number of local publications. It turns out that the actual data showed that jobs grew by a third — which is still a significant boost, but is definitely different from saying they tripled.

Amazingly, I had a phone call Monday morning well after this post was published with a rep at the SF Assessor-Recorder’s office to discuss the data, and that rep did not clear up this error (the actual numbers were published on the web later in the afternoon.) Oh, politics. Either way, they have since made the raw data available on their website, though, which shows that the press release was wrong. This discrepancy was first picked up by Adam Koval’s Socketsite.

Regardless of the circumstances, it’s my responsibility to double-check our data and I sincerely regret the error.

A few months back, TechCrunch TV had the opportunity to chat with Mayor Lee about his tech push in San Francisco — you can watch that interview in the video embedded below: